Why a Newburyport Literary Festival…
The Newburyport Literary Festival is a celebration of literature, authors, and readers. With its rich literary heritage, the greater Newburyport area has a lot to be excited about. Writers as diverse as John Greenleaf Whittier, John P. Marquand, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Andre Dubus II have called Newburyport home.
Nowadays, dozens of novelists, poets, and writers of nonfiction live in and around Newburyport. Some of today’s talented authors include: Andre Dubus III, author of The House of Sand and Fog; Keith Ablow, Inside the Mind of Scott Peterson; Frieda Arkin, author of Hedwig and Berti; Elisabeth Brink, author of Save Your Own; and Mark Karlins, Music over Manhattan.
The Newburyport Literary Festival is, yes, a celebration of readers, authors, and literature. It is also a great collaborative effort bringing people together with tasks lists that reach beyond one’s ability to imagine.
It is also greater than the sum of it’s parts.
The reason? The participants.
The festival is designed to celebrate and attract readers–readers who are also photographers, readers who are also computer programmers or salespeople or teachers or clerks, accountants, doctors, masons, carpenters, lawyers, engineers, housewives, ministers, journalists, mothers, fathers, children, immigrants, elitists, wealthy, impoverished, scholars, librarians, waitresses, cooks, etc. We are readers one and all. The literary festival is designed to bring people and books together and celebrate the meaningful relationship.
Thanks for coming. Thanks for buying books. And, most of all, thanks for reading.
Vicki Hendrickson,
Festival Director